You might’ve already read this, but for the sake of those who didn’t, I shall post it here. This one was posted by lambchopsil, one of KH’s pillars, our very own admin and proofreader, and who also happens to be an admin at Baka-Updates Manga.

20 Years in Prison for Buying Manga
(copy and pasted from here)

Yes, you read that right. Here’s the deal. Christopher Handley of Iowa, USA was arrested about half a year ago for buying manga. One day, he receives 7 volumes of manga from the post office because he ordered them from Japan. The authorities follow him home because they already investigated the volumes and deemed them “obscene” and “objectionable.” He is arrested, and they confiscate his whole collection: DVDs, manga volumes, VHS tapes, computers, etc. And now he faces a trial and up to 20 years in prison. All for ordering manga.

Now, it’s true that sources say that some of the manga in question are yaoi. Sure, he may have had some hentai in his vast collection. But that’s not the point. He was just going to read them in private in his own home. He didn’t commit some heinous crime and rape someone. The issue here is about freedom. Your personal freedom.

The point is this. You decide what you want to read. Some of you (including me) will never read yaoi. Or yuri, or hentai, or gory/bloody stuff like Elfen Lied. That’s our choice to make.
But what about this scenario? Your favorite series doesn’t have any of that stuff usually. But just one place, in say volume 7, contains a single scene of rape to get the plot going in an interesting direction (mind you, it wasn’t that graphic either). Now imagine the authorities busting into your house and arresting you because you own a manga series with that some obscene content here and there.

So how does this apply to you? Naruto has had some pretty graphic deaths before. Same goes for Bleach. You a shoujo fan? Ever read Peach Girl? Now read this news article. You can name many examples taken from your favorite series. I for one can think of scenes from Mahou Sensei Negima!, something I have personally helped scanlate for the last 2-3 years. Or even Gantz, which I know tons of you read. So who draws the line for what you read? You or them?

Now, I know what you’re thinking. All your manga is downloaded, so there’s no physical evidence of what you’re reading. But investigators can check your hard drive or the trail you leave on the internet for what sites you visit. This may just be the beginning to something broader that could affect you in the future. Future technology could make it much harder for you to get your entertainment. Who can say? (Or the unspoken question: When/Will the companies finally crack down on fansubbing and scanlating?)

Or you’re saying that you don’t read any of that “hardcore” stuff? For sure you’re safe… for now… With the current laws, you won’t get prosecuted for reading Gantz (at least I hope so). But things can change, possibly for the worst.

So what can you do? I realize that a lot of you aren’t even in the United States. But at least some scanlators are. And there are many manga fans here in the US too. I also realize that a lot of us don’t have much money. (Or else why would we download illegally for free?) If you feel willing to help monetarily for this court case and future similar cases, you can do so by donating. If not, you can still spread the news to all the manga fans you know. At least I got you thinking. We fans could use better unity.

Or you can totally ignore this and feel it doesn’t apply. Your choice.

For more information:
Donation Link
http://www.cbldf.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=2

Background Information
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-10-10/iowa-collector-charged-for-allegedly-obscene-manga
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-11-24/lawyer-indicates-manga-in-iowa-obscenity-case-are-yaoi

Other Editorials
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/editorial/2008-12-11/christopher-handley/jason-thompson
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/editorial/2008-12-11/christopher-handley/carl-horn

This news post does not necessarily reflect the official view of MangaUpdates. This was written by I, lambchopsil, admin of MU. This is meant to get dead fans thinking outside of their own little worlds. There actually IS a global fan base for anime and manga.

Although, most of us who are anime and manga fans think that this case is ridiculous, there IS such a case and it’s still on going. According to sources, this case has been pushed back until next year (2009).

To everyone who has been experiencing problems to download something, we’ve transferred broken files to a reliable ( :-) ) server. There should be no broken link currently, so why don’t you try and download all of our releases now >:3

Have a nice day~

A lot of people are probably thinking holy **** theres a release :P
yea uni and real life sucked away a lot of time
but forget that here is utawarerumono chapter nine

get it here

and there should be more ready soon :P hopefully within the current month

This is just an info page regarding our release of Utawarerumono. Our old releases were taken from the

magazine version of Utawarerumono. And then, there’s a book that came out after. The book and the magazine chapters jumps from one chapter to another so we decided to simply follow the book version for less confusion. We will be re-uploading everything in their correct chapters, following the book, in a few days.

If in case you are interested to know which chapters are which, here’s the list:

Volume 1
Prologue - One Day In Yamayura (mag ch1)
Chapter 1 - Let’s Go To The Hot Springs!! (mag ch2)
Chapter 2 - An Adult Woman?! (mag ch3)
Chapter 3 - Two Otousans? (mag ch4)
Chapter 4 - The One You Must Protect (mag ch5)
Chapter 5 - Miss Hinamatsuri Contest (mag ch6)
Chapter 6 - Aruruu Is Okaasan (mag ch9)

Volume 2
Chapter 7 - Hakuoro-san’s Memory (Part 1) (mag ch7)
Chapter 8 - Hakuoro-san’s Memory (Part 2) (mag ch8)
Chapter 9 - A Souvenir For Oniisama (mag ch10)
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Afterword

Thank you to Roxybudgy for this info.

We just have a lot on our hands right now, IRL.

We are trying to get by. Believe me, we do. We’re doing our best out here, so spare us the remarks, it doesn’t help. RL is more important to us, well, because it’s RL! Scanlation is a hobby, not a job, remember that.

That’s it. I just want to leave the message since I’ve been getting feedbacks that we’re, uh.. dead and uh, that we’re not literally doing anything.

XDXD

Happy happy birthday to one of our old admins, the lazy editor, backend guy, etc. etc, SELO!

Please don’t hesitate to give him your birthday wishes. you may also add a little hug or a kiss while at it. (You can curse him back again later when his birthday’s over. =P

And I just wanted to let you guys know, that I was blackmailed to make this image above and to post this greeting. =P

here a new chapter of saving life this is both pled’s and lings first release to yay for them first off
secondly this chapter has twin lolis in it even if they aren’t in this chapter for very much it’s still awesome :P
get it here

–

Added to Saving Life project page with link to server 1 download. ~Euri

As of a recent the site has undergone major bandwidth problems. One piece of the problem is the way people download their fanbooks and manga from this site….

I hope that for those who are unaware, KH offers a Torrent tracker, making it simple to download multiple items at once without hogging much bandwidth. you will find most of our fanbooks there and also our latest in Translated manga.

Getting started is easy.

1 - visit this site and download yourself and install Utorrent (if you have your own torrent program already that is fine too)

http://www.utorrent.com/

2 - open U torrent after it is installed and press Ctrl + P…. or on the top tool bar Options > Preferences

on the window that opens select the tab Downloads and in the top row select where you want your downloads to be saved.

3 - visit http://kawaiiheavens.net/tracker/ and select all the downloads you want, sit back play a game or two and hopefully your manga will be ready for reading after. You can leave the torrent program on while you play games and other things, if you turn off your computer that is ok, just remember to open up U torrent the next time you hop on…. it’s so simple.

if you are lazy you can also use these quick links for great torrents…..

Shuffle Volume 1 (contains chapters 1 - 6 ) - click here for the link

Utawareumono Volume 1 (contains chapters 1 - 7) - click here for the link

More should be here soon, plenty more on our tracker ( http://kawaiiheavens.net/tracker/ )

If you were visiting this site for the last two days (probably), you might’ve seen that we exceeded our bandwidth. To think, the bandwidth of this site is already huge and that we’re all a bit broke at the moment. ＿|￣|○ As an immediate resolution, I decided to disable all downloads from server 1 until the next month where we gain our bandwidth back too 100%. As of current, we’re just borrowing a few more additional bandwidth from Ichigo-sama who’s donating graciously huge amount of space and bandwidth for this site. I’ll try my best to upload the files into other servers for your downloads for the mean time, but I can’t possibly do this all in one day (well, it is possible if it’s the only thing I do, but I have work and all).

Oh, and please don’t forget to say thank you to Ichigo-sama for being nice, okay?  :)

=_=; Finally…. It has been awhile since we released Saving Life, and due to the fact that some unfortunate events happened with our staff’s computer and us being lazy (especially me who became the editor for it~ ^,^;)… Anyways…. some random group decided to steal our project without even informing us… =_=; *sigh* We even have the script for the next chapter which our translator worked really hard for, but we decided to drop this project due to that… *sigh* Some people are just inconsiderate *BEEP*…

So yeah, this is the last chapter we’re going to release and it will be move to our dropped project… We’re sad to let it go, but we’re short on staffs too… Anyways, I won’t let you wait longer for this last chapter…

For lazy people like me, here’s the link: Saving Life Chapter 04.

We are still recruiting staffs especially translators for our new projects… Please go to our forum and contact either me (Kiatsu), Euri or Kat.

PS: VERY VERY IMPORTANT!! READ THIS!! ~Euri

–edit–

Yesh! The entire (few remaining) staffs decided that we’re continuing the project.
~Euri @ 20080715.1348 (GMT+8)